I am developing an open source iOS application that use a significant number of other open source projects which, in turn, use a number of different open source licenses such as MPL/GPL, MIT, and BSD. I am also using sample code from Apple's developer site, which has their own terms of use. The code dependencies are such that my code would not be of much use without theirs.

If this project is used, then it would be nice to pick a license that best fits in with this mashup. I am interested in maintaining the freedom of my code but do not want to create a catch-22 or make life hard for people who need to use this project for personal use or profit.

My inclination is to use MIT's, as I have done so before. I asked an IP lawyer about this matter, and she replied (pro bono), "it probably doesn't matter." Of course, that advice was worth every penny.

Moving away from legal issues and looking at this from a social perspective, which license would appeal most and offend least? I thought about no license but was warned (pro bono), "If you do not, then someone else may." That one might have been worth paying for but please do not tell her;-/.

This post highlights the possibility that the NSA could spy on Americans in America by working with a foreign partner to act as a proxy in exchange for the NSA spying on their people, sort of like wife-swapping. Obviously, it would not be Saudi Arabia, as they lack the resources for such a grand effort. However, the British could do it quite well. More importantly, it fits with the American business trend of outsourcing and off-shoring work.
As for Saudi Arabia, they see like a good place to outsource 'enhanced interrogation'. It would be ironic, too, given that we have so many Americans who would be more than qualified to do the dirty work. I guess they could move to Riyadh.

NicknamesAreStupid writes: No-Ip, a favorite place for those who cannot get or afford a dedicated IP address for a domain name, just announced they are back online after battling Microsoft, who took down over 20 of their domains by civil court order. No-Ip eventually won in court, but it goes to show how the Big Dogs of the Internet can crush the little ones.Link to Original Source

NicknamesAreStupid writes: In spite of the urban legend of Al Gore, May 10th marked the 40th anniversary of Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn authoring the first draft of the Internet architecture and TCP/IP at the Palo Alto Canaba Hotel (once a Hyatt and now a Crowne Plaza). Today, they celebrated at Mitchell Park. Vint, who worn a three piece suit, told stories about booting up a PDP-11 (or LSI-11, according to Ron Crane) at Stanford, talking in his three-piece suit to Congress (who thought that people from ARPA never dressed so well), and how the Internet is more than a bunch of wires or 'tubes'. Others talked about the grandfather of HTML (SGML's creator Charles Goldfarb, IBM), InterOp before patents and corporate greed (Dan Lynch), and one, who shall remain nameless, who outed Vint for being the world's first geek because he wore those damn suits in high school (they went to Van Nuys High School).

BTW, the Cabana is also famous for hosting the Beatles in 1965 and being the design model for Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. A plaque dedicating the authorship by Vint and Bob will be installed at the hotel soon. I assume the Cabana already have one for the Beatles.Link to Original Source

The last machine that I recall using 8" disks was an NEC PC 8086. Running DOS 2.1, it was shaped like a microwave oven. That was in the mid 1980s. The diskette held about a megabyte, and there was no HDD.

The DDN network is likely an X25 WAN with bisync lines (RS422 or V35), a.k.a. ARPAnet. Bisync was notorious for going down due to 2-bit errors, making data look like control characters. I had a script that could reset a line, and you couldn't tell if the signal had gone down. That meant it was possible to tap into it. Diskettes could carry malware, and as several have mentioned, machines that booted from them were victims of some of the first PC viruses. Theirs probably boot from socketed EPROMs, which are easy to swap. All this was architected before network security was an issue. Fortunately, most terrorists are too young to know about these antiquities. However, if the Air Force believes it is invulnerable because it is ancient, then we are doomed.

NicknamesAreStupid writes: As Whoever57 pointed out, there are some who will still get support for Microsoft Windows XP — the 'haves'. However, most will be the 'have nots'. Anytime you have such market imbalance, there is opportunity. Since Microsoft clearly intends to create a disparity, there will certainly be those who defy it. What will Microsoft do to prevent bootleg patches of XP from being sold to the unwashed masses? How will they stop China from supporting 100 million bootleg XP users? And how easily will it be to crack Microsoft's controls?

It would not be the first time the deceased left a will with a prank inside. Given the vulture-like disposition of some relatives, she might have left the map to her fortune inside the iPad. I would. Without the password, the data would be lost, as the password is used to encrypt the data.

. . . that it was actually the K**h brothers who contracted with the Russian Mafia to invent Bitcoin, and they set Nakomoto up as the fall guy. I'm sure it is totally bogus, in spite of the salaciousness and viral rumor-mongering appeal. Has anyone got any completely unsubstantiated confirmation of this?

As a desktop guy from way back (my 1st was a H89 that I built myself), I find this news to be depressing. However, the handwriting is on the wall. Once the volumes of desktops drop, the motherboard will become the exotic anomaly and hardware hacking will be the domain of the Raspberry PI generation.